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FE: Promises, promises

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FE: Promises, promises

from JoeUser Forums

For those of you new to Stardock’s games, let me say, welcome! We’re glad you’re here!

For those of you who are veterans, thanks for hanging out with us.

I want to make sure users are fully aware, because it comes up sometimes, that we have intentions/plans for many things and on the other hand we have promises/requirements/obligations.

The former means, we intend to do something but it is not a guarantee. The latter means, yes, it’ll be in there.

Let’s start for the promises for FE:

  1. It won’t be released until we are happy with it.  Now, truth be told, I was pretty happy with WOM.  I was, as many may recall, working 100+ hours per week for the entire Summer before it was released.  With Derek in charge, I can go back to my traditional Executive producer role (ala GalCiv and Sins of a Solar Empire and to a lesser extent Demigod) which usually involves me pooping on the game for months prior to release and telling everyone internally how terrible the game is. I much prefer to distribute the insults rather than aborb them.
  2. The campaign will be good and engaging.
  3. The randomly generated maps will include randomly generated continents. WOM had randomly generated maps on pre-built continents.
  4. There will be a lot of spells. I don’t know what the final count will be. But they will be interesting, important, and exciting.
  5. There will be a lot of soul to the game. The players will talk to you in interesting ways. There is a lot of backstory for pretty much everything.
  6. There will be a lot more quests. There’s a ton of quests in FE. And unlike in WOM, where the quests were virtually all written by me in the middle of the night in the final several weeks (don’t ask me why I had to write these…) these quests are a collaboration between fantasy author David Stern and Toby (associate producer).
  7. Tactical Battles are totally different than WOM. It’s all initiative based now. No more “rounds”. Eliminates a ton of potential cheese and makes magic and tactics matter more.
  8. EVERYONE who bought Elemental: War of Magic in 2010 will get FE for free. Automatically.

Now, let’s talk about intentions for FE:

  1. We intend for there to be spells with a casting time that can then be countered.  This is almost certain to make it in but we have not made it a “Requirement”.  It’ll be based on how “fun” they play out.
  2. We intend there to be multiplayer of up to 16 people. However, it is not a requirement. If it would result in a lot of resources being siphoned off from the single player experience or would, on its own, result in delaying the release, it’ll get cut.
  3. We intend to have vastly more modding abilities in than any game we’ve ever made.  Actually, this is more close to a promise because the game is almost exclusively XML driven because of the project management system (coders don’t implement game design, the producers do and it’s XML driven via spread sheets and such). The AI makes heavy use of this. 
  4. We intend to have a almost completely new sound track. This isn’t a promise. We’ve gotten a lot of new music and effects in and have put them in but we wouldn’t delay the game over making sure all the music and sound is new.
  5. We intend to have Fallen Enchantress at retail. But because we won’t commit to a release date, we can’t promise this.
  6. We intend to have significant faction differentiation. In War of Magic, the Empires all shared the same tech tree and the Kingdoms had their own. Other than that, each faction only had minor differences.  Now, all of the factions are humanoids (we don’t have a spider race, for instance) but we intend for each faction to look and play very differently. How successful we are on this will be in the eye of the beholder.  But we will be making a best effort here to make them as different as we can as budget allows (i.e. we’re not willing to push the date back so that we can have an insectoid race.
338,632 views 169 replies
Reply #51 from Elemental Forums Top

There is value in the good name of a company.  Just ask Gamestop, who lacks it and paid the price for it some with the Impulse acquisition.

 

 

Reply #52 from Elemental Forums Top

What I meant is that it shouldn't first and foremost be considered a business move. Sure it has a positive effect on the Stardock brand, who would argue that. I just take it more as a personal thing.

SoundPackager - Customize the Windows sound scheme
Reply #54 from Elemental Forums Top

It's many of these things at once. It is good for us, it is a good business move for Brad, it is kind, it is responsible. But it's not "free", any more than the spam offerings of "free" trials of (insert service of your choice) stuff is free. "Without additional monetary expenditures" would be more accurate in FE's case. That said, I am happy that Brad is making this business choice!

Back on topic, I really do not see anyone really wanting multiplayer. Isn't that interesting? Maybe Brad should just scrap it...

Reply #55 from Elemental Forums Top

Business move or not. I think it doesn´t matter, as long as it is a win - win thing for everybody.  |-) But its definitely nothing normal and very kind.

Multiplayer is not important for me. A Hotseat mode would be cool, but thats not gonna happen. 

Reply #56 from Elemental Forums Top

The thing about MP is that for TBS games, very few people outside of game reviewers want it, and game reviewers dock on their reviews for it.

 

I think it's something that should be in there to have it in there, and to cover for any AI flaws, but it takes a lot of effort to get MP TBS going, which usually isn't worth it.  On top of that, Stardock generally does awesome AI which reduces the need for MP a good bit.

 

 

Reply #57 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting onomastikon, reply 45
Sounds "promising" for sure!

The only thing I would not put resources into is Multiplayer. We all have good multiplayer games on our machines, we are looking for some good SP action with that famous Stardock AI. I can imagine that making multiplayer work with tactical battles is a real hassle.


Quoting DsRaider, reply 22
Ya I feel a little cheap when I hear I will get FE for free.

But it's NOT free. We all paid $50 for it way back in the day when we preordered WoM. WoM did not deliver, and so we are getting a substitute product.

Brad is cleverly calling it "free", but NOTHING is free. Brad is reallocating resources. He is taking a small short-term cut in liquid cash income for an increase in long-term customer post-sales binding. It's probably a smart business move by him. Like almost all economic decision-making, which is closely related to game theory decision-making, you could probably see this as a game -- even as something in the WoM world if you like. Brad is spending a few gildar and increasing his prestige. A good move? Time will tell. I think so. But it is not "free", any more than those banners anywhere in the internet offering you "free" content for anything is "free".

 

The problem with your argument is that you are valuing E:WOM as being worthless.

Certainly it had a bumpy launch to put it mildly but as of now, it's a pretty decent game. I've had a lot of fun with it lately to be honest and in my opinion I've got my money's worth.

 

So, I too consider E:FE as free and it's shaping up to be an excellent free game.

 

Kudos to Stardock for doing the right thing.

 

 

Reply #58 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Lantros, reply 55
Business move or not. I think it doesn´t matter, as long as it is a win - win thing for everybody.  But its definitely nothing normal and very kind.

Multiplayer is not important for me. A Hotseat mode would be cool, but thats not gonna happen. 

 

I would certainly like to see hotseat for E:FE. :)

Reply #60 from Elemental Forums Top

Yeah, it would be really nice. But i remember statements for WoM, that there will be 100% no hotseat. I don´t think this changed with FE,

Reply #61 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Lantros, reply 60
Yeah, it would be really nice. But i remember statements for WoM, that there will be 100% no hotseat. I don´t think this changed with FE,

 

I wouldn't expect hotseat for E:FE either.

 

I would be nice to see it in a future add on if at all possible. :)

Reply #62 from Elemental Forums Top

MP is a difficult issue because the last one had no tactical battles. I won't play it without them and I haven't tried. I am against spending anything on MP unless it can be as polished and tactical battley as SP. I would rather they just make a new game geared towards MP if that is something Stardock wants to focus on. 

They could call it "Zero Rush." It would be a TBS, RTT, where you are prevented from any kind of rush strategy and everything is designed for fun and balance in about two hours  of back and forth gameplay. If they want to do that with the Elemental series great. If MP is just the same game as FE with a human player that will rush me, lose, rage, ragequit, and then leave me to fight six computers online without the joy of tactical battles, I say drop completely and put in griffin cavalry in addition to bears and seahorses. 

Reply #63 from Elemental Forums Top

I simply don't have time for MP. That's probably the same argument most that don't care for MP have.

Reply #64 from Elemental Forums Top

Imho multiplayer should be either fully developed, or not included. To go half the way and claim multiplayer functionality makes nobody happy - the multiplayers won't get a good experience and the singleplayers get less development time.

Fully functional multiplayer, to me, would mean:

- Custom hosting, so we don't have to play off SD servers
- Tactical battles
- Quests and Events (are they in FE?)
- Mods
- The ability to replace players with AI, or other players, as the game progresses
- Consecutive turns
- Shared unit control so units may be borrowed to allies
- Diplomacy functioning between players, ie trade screens

As you can see, I don't believe anyone will fire up FE and go "Okay, let's do a quick game in 30 minutes". 4x TBS means people will want to take their time. If you want short games of 4x, go play rts.

Reply #65 from Elemental Forums Top

 

 

I love it when games allow one to turn there own kingdom into ai to see how it fares once you've set it up, being able to take back the reigns at any given time.

 

I strongly support multiplayer/hotseat, but if we get "griffin cavalry in addition to bears and seahorses" first then that's fine with me. 

 

I agree with Reply #64

 

 

 

 

Reply #66 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Heavenfall, reply 64
Imho multiplayer should be either fully developed, or not included. To go half the way and claim multiplayer functionality makes nobody happy - the multiplayers won't get a good experience and the singleplayers get less development time.

Fully functional multiplayer, to me, would mean:

- Custom hosting, so we don't have to play off SD servers
- Tactical battles
- Quests and Events (are they in FE?)
- Mods
- The ability to replace players with AI, or other players, as the game progresses
- Consecutive turns
- Shared unit control so units may be borrowed to allies
- Diplomacy functioning between players, ie trade screens

As you can see, I don't believe anyone will fire up FE and go "Okay, let's do a quick game in 30 minutes". 4x TBS means people will want to take their time. If you want short games of 4x, go play rts.

^ This.

That's my question about MP - Is it the full game in MP or the "diet coke" version that WoM MP was? Because if it's the latter, don't bother. WoM would have been improved by having no MP whatsoever rather then the really weak MP implementation it got, and I say that as the person here who wants MP the most.

If an MP game is the same as an SP game except with another human thrown in somewhere, then it'll do well. That's all people ever wanted out of it - the ability to empire build with (or against) a friend.

 

(I'm also highly baffled by the people saying "don't do MP, but I'd like hotseat!" Hotseat is the single least used type of MP these days.)

Reply #67 from Elemental Forums Top

Replacing a player with AI is (to me) more about not losing a vital part of a game once somebody decides the game isn't worth their time. Actually it is possible that E:wom had that, I'm not sure. The funny thing about E:wom multiplayer was, you had no way of telling if the people in the game were still there. Given the quality of the netcode and the servers, they often weren't.

Reply #68 from Elemental Forums Top

Thanks for the informative update.

Looking forward to distinct fractions with fraction specific looks (i.e wraiths have white hair and teeth with vampire like fangs), conversational tones (i.e. "Will you allly with us to" vs. "Let us crush the"), specific weapons (Trogs can wield heavy weapons), spells and quests.

Also looking forward to lots of Spells that will be "interesting, important and exciting". In WOM I could easily reasearch all spells for the magic books I had and there were no choices that a D&D wizard character makes; i.e. which 2 of 40+ spells do I choose to learn at level 3.

Reply #69 from Elemental Forums Top

(I'm also highly baffled by the people saying "don't do MP, but I'd like hotseat!" Hotseat is the single least used type of MP these days.)

 

Right, and its a totaly different kind of MP. And thats the reason why i like it and its the reason why i wrote, that MP isn´t important for me, but i would like hotseat. ;) I don´t demand it. Like you said its the least used type of MP these days. But i´m "old" and have great memories of playing games in hotseat mode (especially HoMM 3). Sitting there with friends, talking, drinking, smoking and playing was just nice. :) 

Hell, we played Gunship together. One guy was flying and one guy was aiming and firing of rockets. :rofl:

 

Its about having together an experience. Stupid old school things. ;) 

Reply #70 from Elemental Forums Top

"We intend there to be multiplayer of up to 16 people. However, it is not a requirement. If it would result in a lot of resources being siphoned off from the single player experience or would, on its own, result in delaying the release, it’ll get cut."

 

16 isn't the max number of factions allowed? just the max number of human players allowed right?

Reply #71 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Heavenfall, reply 67
Replacing a player with AI is (to me) more about not losing a vital part of a game once somebody decides the game isn't worth their time. Actually it is possible that E:wom had that, I'm not sure. The funny thing about E:wom multiplayer was, you had no way of telling if the people in the game were still there. Given the quality of the netcode and the servers, they often weren't.

If it did, it was the only time WoM MP had the AI in it. You couldn't put AI players in a MP game normally.

Reply #72 from Elemental Forums Top

That's just not true, you can put AI in custom multiplayer games in E:wom. And you can even set up teams.

Reply #73 from Elemental Forums Top

Yeah. Like the sound of everything except:

a. Multiplayer. Please don't nerf the game to accommodate quick multiplayer turns. War of Magic felt like this was a driving factor that lead to the crappy tactical battles and simplistic gameplay. Make it great as a single player game first. Please.

b. Differentiation in factions: This should be a requirement - not just an item on the wish list. I'd be very happy to have differentiation within humanoids rather than just humans.

Looking forward to this game. :)

Reply #74 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Heavenfall, reply 72
That's just not true, you can put AI in custom multiplayer games in E:wom. And you can even set up teams.

When did that change? You couldn't do it when I tried to do it. There was just no option to add AI.

Reply #75 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Das123, reply 73
Yeah. Like the sound of everything except:

a. Multiplayer. Please don't nerf the game to accommodate quick multiplayer turns. War of Magic felt like this was a driving factor that lead to the crappy tactical battles and simplistic gameplay. Make it great as a single player game first. Please.

Since tactical battles weren't in MP at all, I fail to see how the game was nerfed to accomodate it. It wouldn't make sense to change a feature to work in MP that doesn't exist in MP.